Commentary
The politics of envy, directing hatred towards the rich, sometimes called class warfare, remains a favourite wellspring of the left. In her book “The Politics of Envy,” American sociologist Anne Hendershott has written of its roots in the 1950s, why the young and naive are especially credulous towards its claims, and how social media has given it new life. As ex-Harper staffer Sean Speer observed at
The Hub, it’s still common to hear the calumny that “Conservatives are for the rich.”
Ask Canadians with above-average knowledge who was the richest prime minister and they’ll most likely say R.B. Bennett (1930–1935) or Brian Mulroney (1984–1993), both Conservatives. Some actually believe that the Tories are the party of corporate Canada, in the pocket of Bay Street, and so on.
It’s true that R.B. Bennett was a self-made millionaire, who had the misfortune to become prime minister within a year of the Great Crash of 1929. As Canadians toughed out the Depression, cartoonists drew Bennett in the “Monopoly” costume of a plutocrat, which he was. His later ennoblement by King George VI as Viscount Bennett of Mickleham, Calgary, and Hopewell, rounded out the image of the grandee.
And yet Bennett’s chief rival, W.L. Mackenzie King, a Liberal and the longest-serving prime minister (1921–1925, 1926–1930, and 1935–1948), was rich too, and had wealthy friends. He provided labour advice to the Rockefellers, and by the late 1920s amassed a pile worth about $260,000 invested in safe government bonds, mostly with the Old Colony Trust in Boston. He bought Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s house in Ottawa and a 600-acre estate worth $1-million in the Gatineau Hills, which he named “Kingsmere” after himself.
It is hard to measure the true extent of King’s wealth because some of it came in the form of gifts from supporters. One biographer said he “was on the take until the day he died” and another that he “not only took money but he ‘took’ the Canadian public.”
The two men’s character was quite different. Bennett while in office wrote cheques to Canadians in need, whilst King, as opposition leader, indulged his personal foibles, dignifying his estate with stone follies, an apt legacy for tourists to admire—or scoff at.
Brian Mulroney from humble beginnings became a successful lawyer and executive before entering politics. As vice-president and president of Iron Ore Canada in the 1970s he earned $350,000 a year, compared to the $100,000 earned by Calgary oil company presidents. He famously bought a house “right at the top” of Westmount.
Mulroney, Bennett, and King were rich prime ministers who had not inherited their wealth.
By contrast, Justin Trudeau and his brother, Alexandre, reportedly split $2.4 million inherited from their father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, prime minister from 1968 to 1984 except for the Joe Clark interregnum of 1979. In 2013, Justin’s campaign claimed that he had inherited a mere
$1.2 million. But of all PMs he was born with the biggest silver spoon in his mouth apart from his own father, himself a millionaire’s son.
John English, a Trudeau biographer and former Liberal MP, claims Pierre inherited $5,000 from his father in 1935. But the family fortune must have been much bigger: Justin’s grandpapa, Charles-Émile, amassed a great fortune and sold his service-station chain and auto club in the early 1930s for $1 million, at least $20 million in today’s dollars.
According to some estimates, Justin’s
net worth grew from $4 million in 2000 to $90 million in 2023. If true, he would be in the running for richest prime minister, but it’s difficult to say.
In fact, it’s odd how hard it is to find any discussion of who was the richest prime minister of Canada. Most available rankings say who was the “best and worst” or the “longest-serving.” A good addition would be “who was the most boring?” Then there is the joke about “the shortest book ever written.” Answer: “the book of Italian war heroes.” Another “shortest” book would be the military record of Canada’s prime ministers.
Americans seem to be more interested in who was the wealthiest president, and it is easy to find rankings such as those of
USA Today or
Voice of America. Donald J. Trump is reportedly the wealthiest ever, with a peak net worth of US$3.1 billion. Many early presidents, too, were worth hundreds of millions in current dollars. Jack Kennedy was worth $1.1 billion, Teddy Roosevelt $140 million, Lyndon Johnson $109 million, Herbert Hoover $83 million, Franklin Roosevelt $67 million, and so on.
In Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was
attacked for being “a former hedge fund manager” and “reputedly the wealthiest ever prime minister.” But as a writer in The Spectator
put it, the problem is not that Sunak is rich, but that he “combines the perception he is out of touch with the fact of actually being out of touch.”
In Canada the shoe is on the other foot. It’s the Conservatives nowadays who are asking who “
got rich” off government connections and
saying wealth has been driven “from the have-nots to the have-yachts.” Thus the Tories are attacked on other grounds: “Poilievre will be the most right-wing prime minister in our modern history,” a “neo-liberal” with a “mean streak,”
says one writer with a left-wing think tank.
In a sense the left is already the most powerful political force on the spectrum, in influence if not votes, and even the richest. Only rarely does a left-wing party hold the balance of seats in Parliament. But in view of the “long march through the institutions” (the term
coined by German activist Rudi Dutschke), Canada’s cultural, educational, and media establishments have been utterly transformed and dominated by the bad ideas of the left and far-left, ironically with corporate Canada’s compliance. All they need do is announce a new “two minutes hate” (as Orwell put it) or “crisis of the month” to maintain mastery over the media and public opinion.
Of that they have made a fine art.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
